133 


W3 


in 

QJ 


O 
>- 


WOOL 


AND 


WOOL  MANUFACTURE 


A  BRIEF  ANALYSIS 
FOR  THE  LAYMAN 


THIRD  PRINTING 


THE  FIRST  NATIONAL  BANK 
OF  BOSTON 


WOOL 

AJND 

WOOL  MANUFACTURE 


A  BRIEF  ANALYSIS 
FOR  THE  LAYMAN 


BY 

JAMES  PAUL  WARBURG 

of  The  First  National  Bank  of  Boston, 
who  gratefully  acknowledges  the  inval- 
uable collaboration  of  his  colleague, 
H.  B.  Kingman,  and  the  kind  assistance 
rendered  by  various  customers  and 
friends  of  the  bank 


Third  Printing 


THE  FIRST  NATIONAL  BANK 
OF  BOSTON 


COPYRIGHT,  1920 
THE  FIRST  NATIONAL  BANK  OF  BOSTON 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


Part  One 
THE  RAW  MATERIAL 

Chapter     1.     Sheep  Raising. 

Chapter     2.     Shearing  and  Marketing  of  Fleece  Wools. 
Chapter     3.     Pulled  Wool. 

Chapter     4.-  What  is  Wool?     The  Fibre.     Shrinkage.     Grading  and 
Sorting. 

Part  Two 
WORSTED  MANUFACTURE 

Chapter  5.  Scouring. 

Chapter  7.  Back-washing  and  Gilling. 

Chapter  6.  Carding. 

Chapter  8.  Combing. 

Chapter  9.  Spinning. 

Chapter  10.  Dyeing. 

Chapter  11.  Weaving. 

Chapter  12.  Finishing. 

Part  Three 
WOOLEN  MANUFACTURE 

Chapter  13.  The  Making  of  Woolen  Yarn. 

Chapter  14.  The  Manufacture  of  ^oqlen  Cloth. 

Chaptej:  15.  Mohair  and  Alpafca. 

Chapter  16.  Knitting  and  Felt  Manufacture. 

Part  Four 
THE  FINANCIAL  ASPECT 

Chapter  17.     Credit  Risks. 

Chapter  18.     Industrial  Organization  and  Costs. 

Chapter  19.     Demand  and  Supply. 


INTRODUCTION 


Wool  is  one  of  the  world's  primary  raw  materials.  The  United  States 
grows  only  about  one-half  of  the  wool  it  consumes,  and  seventy  per  cent. 
of  the  wool  imported  from  other  countries  comes  through  the  port  of 
Boston.  Of  this  seventy  per  cent,  about  one-half  is  financed  by 
The  First  National  Bank  of  Boston. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  paper  briefly  to  tell  the  story  of  wool  and 
wool  manufacture;  to  outline,  in  other  words,  the  various  stages  inter- 
vening between  the  back  of  the  sheep  and  the  back  of  the  man  who 
wears  the  finished  product.  We  shall  not  go  very  deeply  into  the  tech- 
nical side  of  the  various  manufacturing  processes,  but  we  shall  attempt 
to  sketch  their  functions  and  point  out  their  interrelations.  Finally,  we 
shall  endeavor  to  throw  some  light  upon  the  financing  of  the  separate 
stages. 

The  discussion  of  this  rather  large  subject  falls  naturally  into  four 
parts:  First,  the  raw  material;  second,  worsted  manufacture;  third, 
woolen  manufacture;  and  fourth,  the  financial  side  of  the  question. 

Parts  1,  2,  and  3  will  take  us,  in  rather  a  hasty  survey,  from  the 
birth  of  the  lamb  as  far  as  the  finished  cloth.  We  have  omitted  the 
cutting  up  and  tailoring  processes  because  they  do  not  in  any  way  alter 
the  material.  Part  four  will  attempt  to  show  who  furnishes  the  money 
and  who  makes  ^he  profit  in  each  stage. 


c  ^it  will  -perlraps^be  well  to  call  the  reader's  attention  at  the  outset  to 
the  fact  that  wool  manufacture  includes  two  entirely  distinct  indus- 
tries, the  worsted  and  the  woolen,  and  that  from  the  very  start,  clothing 
wools  are  headed  for  the  woolen  industry,  while  combing  wools  are 
destined  for  the  manufacture  of  worsteds. 

This  paper  is  based  in  part  upon  actual  observation,  in  part  upon 
standard  works  on  these  subjects.  If  liberal  use  has  been  made  of  the 
latter  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  this  does  not  pretend  to  be  an  entirely 
original  treatise,  but  rather  a  condensation  of  existing  materials  for  the 
benefit  of  those  who  are  interested  in  the  various  stages  of  the  indus- 
tries, from  an  outside  point  of  view. 

Boston,  Mass., 
April  19,  1920. 


PART  ONE 

THE  RAW  MATERIAL 


CHAPTER  I 

SHEEP  RAISING 

The  raising  of  sheep  goes  so  far  back  into  primitive  times  that  histor- 
ians have  been  compelled  to  draw  a  veil  over  its  origin.  Whether  sheep 
ante-date  man,  or  man  existed  before  sheep,  is  a  question  that  has 
never  been  authoritatively  answered.  For  our  purposes  very  little  his- 
tory will  suffice.  We  know  that  sheep  were  raised  in  Biblical  times,  but 
we  do  not  know  much  about  them.  We  do  know,  however,  that  the  old  Early 
Romans  practised  sheep-breeding  with  great  care  and  even  went  so  far  History 
as  to  cover  their  animals  with  cloth  in  order  to  preserve  the  clean  qual- 
ity of  the  fleece.  During  the  reign  of  the  Roman  Emperor,  Claudius 
(A.  D.,  50),  an  Italian  named  Columella,  took  several  Italian  sheep 
to  Spain  and  crossed  them  with  the  native  Spanish  Merino  breed.  It  is 
said  that  the  resulting  type  is  the  progenitor  of  all  the  Merino  breeds 
which  now  form  the  basis  of  sheep-breeding.  Under  the  rule  of  the  Sara- 
cens, Spain  became  not  only  a  great  sheep-raising  country,  but  a  woolen 
manufacturing  country  as  well.  In  the  thirteenth  century  there  were  no 
less  than  sixteen  thousand  looms  in  the  town  of  Seville  alone. 

When  the  Saracens  were  driven  out  by  Philip  III.  the  textile  industry    Spain 
disappeared  from  Spain,  but  sheep  husbandry,  which  did  not  require 
skilled  labor,  remained,  and  Spanish  wool  continued  to  be  the  finest  in 
the  world. 

During  the  eighteenth  century  various  European  countries  began  to 
import  merinos  and  cross  them  with  their  native  breeds.  This,  because 
of  the  sturdy  quality  of  some  of  the  native  types,  frequently  produced 
excellent  results.  In  France  we  thus  have  the  origin  of  the  Rambouillet  Europe 
merino,  in  Germany  and  Austria  of  the  Saxony  and  Silesian  breeds.  In 
1810  merinos  were  first  introduced  into  Australia  with  astonishing  re- 
sults both  as  to  grade  of  wool  and  increase  of  flocks.  About  the  same 
time  South  America,  South  Africa,  and  the  United  States  imported  Span- 
ish sheep.  Of  all  the  highly  civilized  countries,  England  is  the  only  one 
where  merino  breeding  was  not  successful.  This  was  due  in  part  to  the 
climate,  but  the  chief  cause  was  the  fact  that  British  sheep-raising  was 
primarily  for  mutton  purposes,  and  only  secondarily  for  wool.  The 
merino  types  are  smaller,  and  hence  do  not  yield  as  good  mutton  car- 
casses as  some  of  the  native  "Down"  and  "Mountain"  breeds.  In  many 
cases,  however,  the  native  English  breeds,  notably  the  Lincolns,  have 
been  imported  to  other  countries  and  there  crossed  with  merinos  with 
very  good  success. 

It  would  not  be  possible  to  give  in  detail  the  various  breeds  of  sheep  Native 
existing  in  different  countries.  Merino  sheep  are  now  bred  in  many  Breeds 
parts  of  the  world,  and,  together  with  the  high  crossbreds,  are  the  source 


551 


Sources 


U.  S. 
Domestic 


Territory 


of  all  the  fine  wools  known  as  merino,  half-blood,  and  three-eighths 
wools.  Long  wools  are  derived  from  various  native  breeds,  chiefly  Eng- 
lish, and  from  the  lower  crossbreds  of  merinos,  such  as  quarter  and  low 
quarter  bloods.  Chinese,  Siberian,  and  Turkish  wools,  as  well  as  many 
other  uncivilized  types,  are  usually  very  long  and  coarse,  and  are  known 
as  carpet  and  braid  wools. 

Most  of  the  best  merino  wools  come  from  Australia,  the  next  from 
South  Africa,  and  then  those  from  South  America.  The  latter  have  one 
fault  in  that  they  contain  many  spiral  burrs  which  are  difficult  to  re- 
move, and  which  frequently  get  through  the  machines  and  show  up  as 
imperfections  in  the  cloth.  Europe  grows  some  very  fine  short  wools, 
but  these  hardly  ever  leave  the  countries  they  are  grown  in. 

United  States  wools  are  known  as  domestic  and  territory.  Domestic 
wools  are  those  grown  in  the  eastern  and  middle  western  states,  notably 
in  the  Ohio  valley.  These  contain  the  highest  grades  of  merino  wools 
grown  in  this  country.  It  must  be  remembered  that  sheep  raising  began 
in  the  East,  and  as  civilization  expanded,  was  gradually  crowded  further 
and  further  westward.  The  opening  of  the  Erie  Canal  in  1825  made 
available  the  fertile  pasture  lands  of  the  Ohio  valley.  The  Ohio  Canal 
eight  years  later  opened  up  still  more  territory,  and  in  1849  during  the 
famous  gold  rush,  sheep  were  first  taken  to  California. 

The  territory  wools  are  those  grown  in  the  Rocky  Mountain  Plateau 
states.  Recently,  with  improved  methods  and  greater  care  in  breeding, 
some  very  fine  wools  have  been  derived  from  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Nevada, 
and  Montana,  and  from  a  few  other  states.  The  Texas  and  California 
wools  are  usually  classed  separately,  because  they  are  in  most  cases 
clipped  twice  a  year.  In  chapter  four  we  shall  discuss  the  various 
grades  and  sorts  of  wool  obtained  from  the  different  breeds,  but  as  the 
wool  is  shorn  or  pulled  before  it  is  graded,  we  shall  take  up  these  pro- 
cesses first. 

AVERAGE  WEIGHTS  OF  DIFFERENT  BREEDS  OF  SHEEP  WITH 
WEIGHTS  OF  FLEECES 


English  Breeds   (Mutton) 


Merino  Breeds 


Breed 

Ewes 

Rams 

Fleece 

Pounds 

Pounds 

Pounds 

Leicester 

185 

235 

10 

Cotswold 

200 

285 

12 

Lincoln 

250 

300 

15 

Southdown 

145 

200 

6 

Shropshire 

165 

215 

9 

Oxford 

220 

275 

11 

Hampshire 

200 

275 

8 

Rambouillet 

Mer. 

155 

235 

18 

Amer.  Merino  A. 

105 

145 

22 

"          " 

B. 

110 

155 

20 

"           " 

C. 

125 

175 

18 

(delaine) 


CHAPTER  II 
SHEARING  AND  MARKETING  OF  FLEECE  WOOL 


Wool  is  obtained  from  the  sheep  in  two  ways;  it  is  either  shorn 
from  the  live  animal,  or  pulled  from  the  skin  of  the  slaughtered  car- 


cass. 


Shearing  was  formerly  done  by  hand.  An  expert  was  able  to  clip  as 
many  as  one  hundred  head  per  day,  but  the  average  was  less  than  half 
of  that  amount.  The  introduction  of  machine  shearing  has  made  it  pos-  Shearing 
sible  for  one  man  to  shear  from  175  to  200  sheep  in  a  day,  and  the 
fleece  is  very  much  more  evenly  clipped  than  formerly.  Some  merino 
breeds,  known  as  type  A.,  have  so  many  folds  of  loose  skin  that  ma- 
chine shearing  is  not  feasible,  but  except  for  these  animals,  and  some  of 
type  B.  or  Rambouillet  Merinos,  almost  all  sheep  are  now  shorn  by 
machine,  that  is,  where  they  are  raised  in  numbers.  Sheep  raising  in 
this  country  is  not  pursued  with  nearly  so  much  care  as,  for  instance,  in  Australian 
Australia.  There  they  have  huge  shearing  sheds  where  the  animals  are  System 
first  sweated  and  then  carefully  shorn.  The  belly  is  shorn  separately, 
whereas  here  the  entire  fleece  is  left  in  one  piece.  In  Australia  each 
fleece  is  carefully  skirted,  that  is,  the  inferior  parts  such  as  the  britch 
are  torn  off.  Then  each  fleece  is  folded  and  tied  up  and  the  fleeces  are 
put  up  in  bales.  Moreover,  a  bale  usually  contains  fleeces  of  the  same 
grade,  so  that  practically  nothing  but  sorting  remains  to  be  done  by  the 
purchaser.  Here,  on  the  other  hand,  fleeces  are  shorn  in  one  piece  and 
are  folded  up  carelessly,  without  skirting.  The  tying  up  is  frequently 
done  in  a  slovenly  manner,  and  a  bag  will  very  often  contain  all  grades 
of  wool  from  the  finest  to  the  coarsest.  Of  late  years  some  attempt  has 
been  made  to  install  the  Australian  system,  but  without  much  success. 

The  shearing  season  in  the  northern  hemisphere  is  in  the  spring,  in   Seasons 
countries'  below  the  equator,  except  Australia,  it  is,  of  course,  in  our 
fall.     In  Texas  and  California,  as  well  as  in  some  other   localities, 
shearing  is  frequently  done  twice  a  year. 

Roughly  speaking,  there  are  seven  ways  in  which  the  wool  grower   Marketing 
may  dispose  of  his  fleece  wool: 

1.     He  may  sell  it  to  buyers  representing  merchants.     The  merchant,   Merchant 
while  he  is  a  middle  man  and  therefore  incurs  the  usual  anathema,  per-   Buyers 
forms  a  variety  of  very  essential  services.     At  the  time  of  the  clip  he 
sends  his  buyers  to  the  wool  producing  centers  and  buys  the  clip  for 
cash,  then  he  ships  it  to  his  warehouse,  grades  it,  and  sells  to  the  mills 
on  credit.     Obviously  he  finances  a  very  important  part  of  the  produc- 
tion, and  i£  furthermore  essential,  because  he  knows  the  demand,  which 
the  wool-grower  does  not,  and  the  supply — of  which  the  mill  is  usually 


571 


\ 


Local 
Mills 


Local 
Dealers 


Mill  2.     The  wool  grower  may  also  sell  to  buyers  representing  mills.    He 

Buyers  \\kes  to  do  this  because  he  eliminates  the  merchant's  profit,  but,  as  a 

matter  of  fact,  there  are  only  very  few  mills  large  enough  to  stand  the 
buying  expense,  and  even  fewer  that  can  afford  to  buy  their  whole  sea- 
son's supply  of  raw  material  at  one  time  and  for  cash.  Also,  mills  can 
usually  employ  only  certain  grades. 

3.  If  the  grower  thinks  that  he  is  not  receiving  fair  offers  from  the 
Consignment     visiting  buyers,  he  will  frequently  consign  his  wool  to  a  merchant  to  be 

sold  on  commission  for  his  account.  In  this  case  he  may  or  may  not  get 
a  better  price,  but  it  costs  him  his  carrying  charges  plus  commission. 
There  are  some  wool  houses  that  make  it  a  specialty  to  execute  com- 
mission sales  of  this  nature. 

4.  Some  wool  is  sold  direct  to  nearby  mills.     This  is  done  particu- 
larly in   Ohio,   where  many  of  the  smaller  mills   obtain  their   entire 
requirements  in  this  manner. 

5.  Wool  growers  sometimes  sell  to  local  dealers.    This  is  particularly 
prevalent  in  regions  where  the  individual  grower's  production  is  small. 
In  most  eastern  states  there  are  a  great  number  of  small  farmers  who 
grow  a  certain  amount  of  wool.     The  local  dealers  are  in  many  cases 
also  the  general  store-keepers,  and,  since  they  are  the  farmer's  creditor 
on  other  merchandise,  and  since  the  average  farmer  knows  very  little 
about  the  grades  of  wool,  these  individuals  very  frequently  turn  a  hand- 
some profit  when  they  in  turn  sell  to  the  visiting  buyers. 

6.  Some  wool  is  sold  through  farmers'  co-operative  sales  agencies. 
But  these  organizations  have  in  the  past  been  so  poorly  administered, 
that,  as  a  general  rule  they  have  not  been  successful. 

7.  Finally,  there  remains  the  method  whereby  almost  all  the  British 
and  colonial  wools  are  sold,  namely,  by  auction.     Auction  sales  have 
been  established  for  almost  a  century  in  London,  Liverpool,  Antwerp. 
Bremen,  Hamburg,  Marseilles,  and  recently  in  Australia.  This  method  of 
disposing  of  their  raw  product  does  not,  however,  appeal  to  the  Ameri- 
can growers,  because  of  the  inherent  American  trading  instinct.     It  is 
also  not  very  feasible  in  this  country,  because  the  wool  is  not  graded  in 
the  shearing  sheds  and  because  sheep-raising  is  not  standardized. 

The  chief  markets  for  wool  in  this  country  are  Boston,  Philadelphia, 
Chicago,  New  York  and  St.  Louis. 


Auctions 


Markets 


CHAPTER  III 

PULLED  WOOL 

We  have  above  discussed  the  shearing  and  marketing  of  wool  ob- 
tained from  the  living  animal.  There  remains  a  large  quantity  of  wool 
which  is  taken  from  the  pelts  of  slaughtered  sheep.  In  1919  there  were 
produced  48,300,000  pounds  of  pulled  wool  in  the  U.  S.  as  against 
265.939,000  pounds  of  sheared  wool. 

Skin  wool,  or  tanner's  wool,  as  it  is  sometimes  known,  is  used  exten-    Use 
siveFy  for  soft  twist  yarns,  bed  blankets,  flannels,  felts,  etc.     It  is  also 
used  as  an  admixture  in  blends  for  top-making,  as  we  shall  see  later. 

There  are  three  methods  whereby  pulled  wool  is  obtained. 

The  oldest  and  simplest  process  is  known  as  sweating,  and  consists   Sweating 
simply  in  sweating  the  hides  until  the  wool  is  loosened  and  can  easily 
be  pulled  out.     The  disadvantage  of  this  method  is  that  it  injures  the 
hides. 

The  lime  process  consists  in  loosening  the  wool  by  painting  the  flesh   Lime 
side  of  the  hide  with  lime.     This  also  injures  the  hides  somewhat  and 
has  a  bad  effect  on  the  dyeing  qualities  of  the  wool. 

The  depilatory  process  is  the  best,  and  varies  from  the  lime  process    Depilatory 
only  in  that  a  solution  is  used  instead  of  lime.    This  mixture  consists  of 
sodium  sulphate,  sulphuric  acid,  and  oyster  shells. 

By  far  the  greatest  pullery  in  the  world  is  situated  at  Mazamet, 
France,  where  the  industry  has  .assumed  gigantic  proportions.  The  large 
packers  in  this  country  all  operate  their  own  pulleries,  and  the  pulled 
wool  is  marketed  largely  by  them.  Most  mills  buy  their  pulled  wool 
direct  from  the  pulleries,  but  some  is  handled  by  merchants. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHAT  is  WOOL 
The  Wool  Fibre 

We  have  now  traced  the  wool  from  the  sheep's  back  as  far  as  the 
bag,  and  we  may  assume  that  the  bag  has  travelled  from  the  shearing 
shed  to  the  merchant's  or  mill's  warehouse.  Some  foreign  wools,  not- 
ably Australian  and  South  American,  are,  as  we  have  seen,  skirted  and 
roughly  graded  in  the  shearing  shed,  so  that,  when  the  bag  is  opened, 
there  remains  only  the  sorting  to  do.  Graolirjg  is  the  separation  of 
fleegegjnto  classified  groups.  Skirting  is  the  removal  from  each  fleece  of 
the  worst  parts,  namely,  the  britch  wool,  manure  locks  (known  as  tags), 
and  matted  or  kempy  portions.  Sortingjsjhe  dividing  of  the  individual 
fleece  into  various  classifications." 


591 


Before  we  take  up  the  grades  and  sorts  in  detail,  it  will  be  well  for  us 
•  to  inquire  briefly  into  the  nature  of  the  wool  fibre.     In  the  first  place, 

Wool  as  wo°l  difTers  from  hair  in  that  its  fibre  consists  of  a  core  (medulla),  a 

Against  Hair  pulp  (cortex),  and  an  epidermis.  A  hair  follicle  consists  of  a  medulla 
and  an  epidermis.  Moreover,  the  epidermis  of  a  hair  is  closely  and  even- 
ly scaled,  which  makes  it  smooth  and  lustrous.  The  surface  of  a  wool 
fibre  is  not  evenly  serrated,  which  accounts  for  the  felting^  or  interlock- 
ing, quality.  Wool  in  which  there  is  insufficient  moisture  and  natural 
grease  (yolk)  frequently  becomes  felted  at  the  ends.  Such  wool  is  vari- 
ously referred  to  as  cotted,  cotty,  or  brashy.  The  tensile  strength  of  a 
wool  fibre  is  low,  its  elasticity  high.  The  length  of  the  fibre  varies  from 
one  to  over  ten  inches,  and  the  diameter  from  .0018  to  .004  inches.  The 
better  a  wool  the  less  like  it  is  to  a  hair.  Generally  speaking,  the  finer  , 
the  wool,  the  shorter  the  fibre,  but  length  alone  would  not  indicate  the 
grade.  Pure  merino  and  high  cross-bred  wools  have  a  close  wave,  known 
as  crimp,  which  increases  the  elasticity  and  is  therefore  desirable  from 
a  spinning  standpoint. 

The  chemical  composition  of  wool  is:  carbon  50%,  hydrogen  7%, 
nitrogen  18%,  oxygen  22%,  and  sulphur  3%.  It  is  soluble  in  alkalies, 
and  at  a  temperature  of  130°  C.  will  reduce  to  powder. 

Wool  before  it  is  scoured  contains  a  large  quantity  of  yolk,  or  natu- 
ral grease,  and  also,  besides  dust  and  vegetable  matter,  a  considerable 
amount  of  dried  perspiration,  or  suint.  The  amgunt  of  weight  lost 
through  the  removal  of  these  substances  when  the  wool  is  scoured  is 
Shrinkage  termed  shrinkage.  It  will  be  readily  appreciated  that  this  is  a  very  im- 
portant factor  in  connection  with  the  purchase  of  grease  wool.  The  per- 
centage of  shrinkage  varies  from  20%  to  80%.  Nevertheless  a  good 
buyer  will  often  be  able  to  estimate  within  one  or  two  per  cent.  The 
factors  to  be  considered  in  this  connection  are  the  breed,  the  soil,  the 
climate,  and  the  care  with  which  the  sheep  are  raised,  as  well  as  the  dili- 
gence with  which  the  fleeces  are  put  up.  Fine  wools  always  shrink  more 
heavily  than  coarse;  and  pulled  wools,  since  they  are  washed  and 
brushed  during  the  process,  show  a  very  much  lower  shrinkage  than 
fleece  wools.  The  average  shrinking  of  United  States  wools  is  about 
55%.  Fine  domestics  shrink  about  60%.  Lower  grades  about  45%.  Fine 
territory  wools  about  65%;  lower  grades  about  55%.  Pulled  wool  aver- 
ages about  27%.  Fine  Australian  wools  average  49%,  for,  although 
they  are  the  finest,  the  fleeces  contain  less  dirt.  Cape  wools  about  62%, 
and  South  American  about  51%. 

The  qualities  looked  for  in  wool  are  roughly  six,  and  they  vary  ac- 
cording to  the  purpose  for  which  wool  is  to  be  used. 

1.  It  must  be  fine  enough  to  spin  the  required  number  of  counts. 

2.  It  must  be  strong  enough  to  withstand  strain  of  manufacture. 


Grading  fleeces 

3.  It  must  have  the  proper  staple  (length). 

4.  It  must  be  of  a  certain  softness  or  hardness. 

5.  It  must  have  the  proper  felting  qualities  if  the  material  is  to  be 
fulled. 

6.  It  must  either  scour  white,  or  else  have  sufficient  lustre  to  take 
dyes. 

As  we  take  up  the  manufacture  of  worsted  and  woolen  yarns  we  shall 
see  how  these  qualifications  play  a  different  part  in  the  two  processes. 
For  the  present  the  only  difference  we  are  concerned  with  is  staple 
length.  Generally  speaking,  wools  under  two  inches  are  too  short  to  be 
combed  and  are  classed  as  clothing  wools.  Clothing  wools  are  used  for 
woolens,  combing  wools  for  worsteds.* 

In  grading  and  sorting,  practically  the  only  guide  is  the  fineness  of 
the  individual  fibre.  The  other  qualifications  just  enumerated  have  a 
very  imporant  bearing  on  what  the  wool  can  be  used  for,  but  they  have 
very  little  to  do  with  its  classification  by  grades. 

*In  recent  years  combing  machinery  has  been  devised  which  will  comb  wools 
under  one  inch  in  length  so  that  a  considerable  quantity  of  "clothing  wools"  now 
go  into  worsteds. 


Clothing 

and 

Combing 


.mi 


Sorting  Wool 

Fleece  wools  are  graded  by  two  systems,  one  by  bloods,  the  other  by 
[    counts  spun.    (This  means  the  number  of  hanks  of  560  yards  each  to  a 
Classifi-1    pound  of  yarn.)      Domestic  and  foreign  wools  are  usually  graded  by 
cations      bloods.     U.  S.  Territory  wools  are  graded  a  little  differently,  as  per 
second  column  below,  and  pulled  wool  is  only  roughly  graded  into  four 
classes  (third  column).     The  blood  classifications  originated  from  the 
breeding  of  the  sheep,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  have  become  arbi- 
trary terms  denoting  a  certain  degree  of  fineness.    The  same  fleece  may, 
and  frequently  does,  contain  y2,  %,  and  ^  blood  wool. 

COMPARATIVE  GRADES 


U.  S.  Domestic 

U.  S.  Territory 

Pulled 

U.  S.  Counts  Spun 

Foreign  Counts. 

Full  blood   (XX) 

Fine 

AA 

60s 

66-74s 

%        "        (X) 

% 

50s 

60-66s 

% 

V2 

A 

40s 

54-60s 

% 

% 

B 

36s 

48-54s 

% 

% 

B 

32s 

44-48s 

Low  J/4 

Low  ^4 

C 

20s 

40-44s 

Common 

Common 

C 

16s 

36-40s 

Braid 

Braid 

C 

12s 

32-36s 

5121 


When  a  bag  of  domestic  wool  is  opened  the  fleeces  are  taken  out  one 
by  one  and  put  into  baskets  according  to  the  grades  in  the  first  column. 
The  grader  simply  decides  what  the  majority  of  the  fleece  is  and  puts  it  Qrading 
into  that  class.  When  he  has  filled  a  basket  with,  let  us  say,  half-blood 
fleeces,  this  basket  is  given  to  a  sorter.  He  takes  each  fleece,  shakes  it  out, 
and,  first  of  all,  skirts  it.  Then  he  separates  it  into  the  various  sorts  it 
contains.  Fleeces  graded  as  half-blood  will  probably  sort  into  mostly  . 

half,   some  fine    (full-blood),   and  a  considerable  quantity  of  three-   " 
eighths  blood.    The  best  wool  comes  off  the  shoulders,  then  the  sides, 
then  the  back,  then  the  thighs,  and  finally  the  britch  and  belly.   Usually 
a  fleece  will  not  contain  more  than  three  sorts.  Sorting 

If  this  were  a  bag  of  Australian,  South  American,  or  Cape  wool,  the 
fleeces  would  in  all  probability  have  been  bagged  according  to  grades, 
so  that  only  the  sorting'  operation  would  have  to  be  performed  by  the 
merchant  or  the  mill. 

When  the  wool  has  been  sorted  it  is  put  into  bins,  and  may  now  be 
said  to  be  ready  for  the  first  of  the  manufacturing  processes  for  which 
it  is  destined.  Sorting  is  sometimes  done  by  the  merchants,  but  more  fre- 
quently by  the  manufacturers. 

Kempy  or  cotted  pieces,  tags,  stained  or  painty  wool,  etc.,  are  called    Off-sorts 
off-sorts,  and  these  are  put  through  a  number  of  processes  for  the  pur- 
pose of  reclaiming  as  much  of  the  wool  as  possible. 


513* 


PART  TWO 

WORSTED  MANUFACTURE 


Scouring  Machine 


Worsted  carding  Machine 


CHAPTER  V 

SCOURING 

When  the  wool  has  been  graded  it  is  sold  either  to  worsted  manufac- 
turers or  to  makers  of  woolen  goods.  The  two  industries  are  entirely 
distinct  and  separate. 

The  first  cog  in  the  worsted  machine  is  the  wool  comber,  or  top- 
maker.     Sometimes  he  buys  assorted  grades,  known  as  matchings,  from  a 
wool  merchant;  sometimes  he  buys  and  sorts  his  own  wool;  but  most 
frequently  he  sorts  and  combs  the  wool  on  a  commission  basis.  Many  of   Blending 
the  big  worsted  mills  do  their  own  sorting  and  combing. 

Tops  are  usually  made  from  blends  of  various  kinds  of  wool,  and 
this  blending  is  done  after  sorting,  before  the  wool  is  scoured. 

Scouring  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  a  glorified  washing.  A  machine  Scouring 
closely  akin  to  a  gigantic  laundry  machine  removes  first  the  yolk  or 
grease  in  an  alkaline  solution,  and  then  rinses  out  the  dirt  and  suint  in 
a  series  of  soap  and  water  baths.  The  last  bath  is  pure  water,  and  from 
this  the  wool  is  taken  on  a  belt  through  the  drier.  From  the  drier  it  is 
usually  blown  through  tubes  to  the  carding  room. 

Approximately  20%  of  the  moisture  is  allowed  to  remain  in  the  wool 
in  order  to  facilitate  subsequent  processes.  If  the  wool  is  still  warm  it 
is  easier  to  card. 


CHAPTER  VI 

CARDING 

The  purpose  of  the  carding  operation  is  to  open  out  the  fibres  in  the    Opens 
wool.    Originally,  carding  was  done  by  hand  with  two  leather  surfaces,    Fl°res 
much  like  butter  pats,  the  inner  faces  of  which  were  studded  with  wire 
nails.     Between  these  two  surfaces  the  wool  was  rubbed  until  all  the 
fibres  were  opened  out.  In  woolen  manufacture  carding  is  more  violent 
and  seeks  to  lay  the  fibres  in  all  directions.     Worsted  carding  aims  to 
separate  the  fibres,  but  also  to  keep  them  as  closely  parallel  as  possible. 

The  carding  machine  is  a  very  complicated  piece  of  mechanism, 
which  we  can  only  attempt  to  describe  here  in  a  cursory  manner.  The  -,,  „  , 
wool  is  automatically  fed  between  the  feed  rollers,  which  revolve  in  op- 
posite directions  and  are  armed  with  heavy  teeth.  From  the  feed  a  roller 
known  as  the  licker-in  starts  the  wool  on  its  course  over  a  number  of 
cylinders,  each  of  which  is  surrounded  by  several  toothed  rollers  known 
as  workers.  Each  worker  has  a  smaller  companion  roller,  revolving  at  a 
higher  speed,  which  derives  its  name  of  stripper  from  the  fact  that  its 
function  is  to  take  the  wool  off  the  worker  and  deliver  it  to  the  next 


Back  washing 


Gilling  before  combing 


worker.  The  last  roller,  known  as  the  fancy,  raises  the  wool  off  the 
cylinder  to  be  caught  by  the  doffer.  The  doffing-comb  lifts  the  wool 
in  a  filmy  sheet  of  fibres,  which  is  condensed  into  a  thick  untwisted 
rope  by  passing  through  a  funnel  on  to  the  balling-head.  This  rope, 
which  is  about  an  inch  and  a  half  in  diameter,  is  known  as  a  sliver. 
A  certain  length  of  it  is  automatically  rolled  into  balls  and  these  are 
taken  into  the  back-wash  room.  From  a  loose  unrelated  mass  the  wool 
has  now  been  transformed  into  a  continuous  strand  of  more  or  less 
uniform  diameter. 


CHAPTER  VII 

BACKWASHING  AND  GILLING 

A  back-wash  machine  takes  several  of  the  carded  slivers  and  com- 
bines them  into  one.  The  slivers  pass  through  several  baths  which  rinse 
them  thoroughly  and  are  then  slowly  drawn  through  a  drier.  The  pro- 
cess is  quite  similar  to  scouring,  except  that  it  is  very  much  less  violent. 

As  the  slivers  come  out  of  the  drier  they  are  fed  through  a  number 
of  gill  boxes.  The  gill  box  is  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  drawing 
operations.  In  this,  and  all  the  following  stages  of  open  drawing, 
there  are  always  several  slivers  being  combined  into  one  and  drawn 
out  until  the  resulting  sliver  has  about  the  same  or  a  smaller  diameter 
than  the  ones  fed  into  the  machine.  The  principle  of  the  gill  box  is 
quite  simple.  Several  slivers  are  fed  in  between  rollers  revolving  at  a 
comparatively  low  rate  of  speed.  As  they  pass  through  they  are  flat- 
tened out  over  what  is  known  as  a  faller.  This  is  armed  with  very  fine 
close  wire  teeth  which  come  up  through  the  fibres  and  the  draft  is  im- 
parted when  the  wool  is  taken  off  the  faller  by  a  final  pair  of  rollers 
which  are  revolving  considerably  faster.  The  sheet  of  wool  which 
emerges  from  these  rollers  is  again  passed  through  a  funnel  and  thereby 
condensed  once  more  into  a  sliver.  This  operation  is  repeated  from 
two  to  four  times,  according  to  the  quality  of  the  top  desired,  and  the 
methods  employed  by  the  particular  mill. 

Where  very  coarse  long  fibred  wool  is  to  be  worked  there  is  no  card- 
ing, and  the  wool  is  prepared  by  straightening  the  fibres  into  a  sliver 
through  a  series  of  gill-boxes. 

At  some  point  during  the  gilling  process  a  slight  amount  of  oil  is 
usually  dropped  onto  the  sliver,  as  this  facilitates  combing. 


Combining 
and  Drawing 
Slivers 


J191 


The  Noble  Comb 


Removes 

Short 

Fibres 


Noils 


CHAPTER  VIII 

COMBING 

The  next  operation,  namely  that  of  combing,  is  again  simple  when 
viewed  as  the  primitive  manufacturing  stage.  The  old  comber  would 
take  a  short  length  of  sliver,  hang  it  on  a  nail  by  tying  one  end  together 
and  then  proceed  to  comb  out  the  short  fibres  much  as  one  may  comb 
out  the  dead  short  hairs  from  a  dog's  coat.  Combing  is  simply  the  re- 
moval from  the  sliver  of  the  short  fibres  which  would  not  spin  properly. 
These  short  fibres  are  known  as  noils  and  are  the  waste  product  of  top- 
making.  The  top  is  a  continuous  untwisted  strand  of  long  wool  fibres 
made  parallel  by  the  comb.  (By  long  fibres  we  mean  fibres  which  are 
relatively  long.  Some  tops  consist  of  fibres  less  than  an  inch  and  a  half 
in  length.  In  this  case,  which  is  very  infrequent,  the  noil  would  be  even 
shorter.) 

Noils  are  sold  either  to  woolen  or  knitting  mills  direct  by  the  top- 
maker,  or  else  sold  to  a  merchant  who  disposes  of  them. 


201 


The  Noble  circular  comb  is  the  most  generally  used  combing  ma- 
chine. Other  types  are  the  Lister,  the  Holden,  and  the  Heilmann.  The 
Noble  comb  is  a  compact  circular  structure  standing  at  a  height  of  about 
three  feet  from  the  floor,  with  a  steam  box  underneath  it.  (Heat  greatly 
facilitates  the  process.)  There  are  two  smaller  circles  inside  the  main 
circumference  which  are  tangent  to  the  outer  circle  at  opposite  points 
of  its  diameter.  All  rotate  in  the  same  direction.  Seventy-two  slivers 
are  rolled  up  in  creels  on  the  outside  of  the  main  circle  and  are 
automatically  fed  on  to  the  tangental  points.  A  dabbing  brush 
pushes  the  slivers  down  between  the  points  of  the  two  circles.  As 
the  circles  draw  apart  the  long  fibres  are  left  protruding  from  the 
inner  edge  of  the  outer  circle  and  the  outer  edge  of  the  inner  circles. 
They  travel  thus  until  they  are  gripped  by  vertical  rollers  set  to  catch 
them.  After  passing  the  rollers  the  wool  is  lifted  off  the  pins  of  the 
circles  by  knives.  The  four  ribbons  of  combed  fibres  (two  from  the 
outer  and  one  from  each  of  the  inner  circles)  are  condensed  into  a 
single  beautiful  even  band  which  coils  itself  softly  into  a  revolving 
can.  What  remains  is  the  waste  or  noil. 


The  Noble 
Comb 


Gilling  the  top 


5211 


Gilling  the        The  top,  as  it  comes  from  the  comb,  is  again  put  through  a  series  of 
T°P  several  gill  boxes  with  the  object  of  further  drawing  it  out.   Once  again 

several  slivers  are  combined  into  one  in  each  process.  At  the  end  of  this 

gilling  the  top  is  coiled  in  balls  and  allowed  to  rest. 

We  have  now  reduced  the  wool  to  its  real  worsted  basis.     The  noils 

have  been  taken  out,  and  the  balls  of  top  are  ready  to  be  sent  to  the 

spinner  to  be  spun  into  worsted  yarn. 

CHAPTER   IX 

SPINNING 

The  first  processes  in  a  spinning  mill  very  closely  approximate  the 
last  operations  in  the  combing  plant.  The  tops  are  usually  gilled  sev- 
eral times  before  weighing,  and  then  are  put  through  several  drawing 
machines  in  which,  as  heretofore,  several  slivers  are  condensed  into  one. 

Drawing  In  the  last  of  these  machines  there  are  no  fallers,  the  entire  process 
consisting  of  two  sets  of  rollers  revolving  at  different  speed.  Each 
operation  results  in  a  slightly  finer  sliver,  and  the  number  of  machines 
through  which  the  material  is  drawn  is  determined  by  the  fineness  of 
the  yarn  desired. 

The  last  of  the  drawing  processes  is  the  so-called  roving  box,  which, 
in  most  cases  is  a  cone-drawing  process.  There  is  a  difference  here  be- 
tween French  spinning  and  English  spinning.  According  to  the  French 

French  system,  which  is  employed  in  this  country  only  for  very  soft  fine  yarns, 

no  twist  is  given  to  the  sliver  until  the  actual  spinning  begins;  and  the 
spinning  is  then  usually  done  on  mules,  which  in  this  country  are 

English  rarely  used  in  the  manufacture  of  worsted  yarn.   We  shall  discuss  these 

machines  when  we  come  to  woolens.  According  to  the  most  common 
procedure  in  this  country,  the  roving  box  not  only  draws,  but  imparts 
a  certain  amount  of  twist  to  the  yarn.  This  is  done  by  winding  the  yarn 
from  horizontal  spools  on  to  vertical  spindles.  These  spindles  are  set 
on  long  frames,  similar  to  spinning  frames,  one  frame  containing 
about  200  spindles.  The  yarn  is  guided  on  the  bobbin  by  an  arm, 
known  as  the  flyer,  which  draws  the  bobbin  around  after  it. 

Spinning  There  is  very  little  difference  between  this  last  drawing  operation 'and 

the  actual  spinning  which  immediately  succeeds  it.  In  both  cases  the 
yarn  is  unwound  from  horizontal  spools  placed  at  the  top  of  the  frame 
through  the  inevitable  two  rollers  going  at  different  speeds,  and  guided 
on  to  the  revolving  spindle.  Since  the  spindle  revolves  vertically  the 
yarn  is  twisted.  The  amount  of  twist  is  regulated,  as  is  also  the  amount 
of  tension,  and  these  two  factors,  together  with  the  quality  of  the  ma- 
terial, determine  the  quality  of  the  yarn.  Worsted  yarn  is  graded  accord- 


122} 


Drawing 

ing  to  the  number  of  counts,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  number  of 
hanks  of  560  yards  that  make  a  pound  avoirdupois. 

Roughly  speaking,  there  are  three  modern  methods  of  spinning, 
namely,  the  flyer,  cap,  and  ring  frames.  All  of  them  are  derived  from 
Arkwright's  original  water  throstle,  and,  if  we  want  to  go  further  back, 
from  the  old-fashioned  spinning  wheel.  To  describe  these  machines  in 
detail  would  be  of  little  benefit  to  one  who  has  not  seen  them,  and  to 
one  familiar  with  mill  machinery  (should  such  a  one  by  evil  chance  see  Flyer 
this  paper)  it  would  be  nothing  if  not  ridiculous.  The  chief  difference 
between  the  three  types  lies  in  the  method  of  driving  the  spindle  and 
guiding  the  yarn  on  to  the  bobbin.  The  flyer  arm  we  have  described 
briefly  above.  In  the  cap  system,  the  bobbin  is  moved  up  and  down  in  Cap 
a  fixed  metal  cap,  something  like  the  front  end  of  a  two-inch  shell-cas- 


ing,  and  this  method  of  guiding  the  yarn  has  the  advantage  that,  because 
of  its  lower  vibration,  the  spindles  may  be  driven  faster.  It  also  causes 
considerably  more  friction  on  the  yarn.  For  worsted  spinning  it  is 
probably  the  most  commonly  employed.  Ring  spinning  is  very  similar 
(to  the  layman)  except  that  the  spindle  revolves  in  a  metal  sleeve,  and 
that  the  yarn  is  guided  by  a  metal  ring  with  a  traveller,  instead  of  by 
the  end  of  the  cap. 

What  follows  now  is  merely  an  auxiliary  process  of  spinning.  The 
yarn  has  been  completed,  but  it  is  rarely  used  for  weaving,  as  it  comes 
off  the  spindle.  Several  strands  are  usually  twisted  together,  both  to 
make  it  stronger  and  to  give  various  effects  of  body  and  color.  The 
number  of  strands  in  a  yarn  are  designated  as  plys.  Yarn  consisting  of 
two  strands  is  called  two-ply,  three  strands  are  three-ply,  and  so  on. 
Yarns  of  two  or  more  colors,  or  yarns  of  varying  counts,  are  frequently 
twisted  together.  It  is  possible  also  to  twist  worsted  and  cotton  yarns. 

Spindlage  Twisting  is  done  in  a  manner  similar  to  spinning.  A  worsted  spinning 
mill  usually  has  about  a  third  as  many  twisting  spindles  as  spinning 
spindles,  but  it  is  important  to  remember  that  when  speaking  of  a  mill's 


Ring 


Twisting 


Reducing 


524^ 


capacity  in  terms  of  spindles,  it  is  only  the  spinning  spindles  that  are 
counted. 

After  the  twisting  is  completed  the  finished  yarn  is  wound  on  small    Winding  or 
spools,  known  as  cheesers,  to  be  weighed.     Next  it  is  wound  on  large  Skeining 
spools  in  such  a  way  that  the  large  spool  holds  the  contents  of  from  ten 
to  twenty  cheesers,  each  wound  in  an  adjacent  space  at  the  same  time. 
Some  of  the  yarn  is  shipped  to  weaving  mills  on  these  large  spools;  and 
some  of  it  is  taken  off  them  and  skeined. 

We  are  now  ready  to  weave  the  cloth,  but  there  are  a  considerable 
number  of  very  interesting  details  which  we  have  been  forced  to  omit. 
All  the  processes  we  have  discussed  produce  a  certain  amount  of  waste  Waste 
material.  The  combing  waste,  known  as  noils,  is  the  largest  by-product 
of  the  worsted  industry,  but  there  is  also  a  considerable  amount  of  yarn 
waste  produced  in  the  various  drawing  and  spinning  operations.  Prac- 
tically all  of  this  material  finds  its  way  back,  in  one  form  or  another, 
into  the  woolen  industry.  The  subject  of  reclaiming  waste  is  in  itself 
so  comprehensive  that  we  can  do  no  more  than  touch  upon  it  here. 


Cap  spinning 


CHAPTER  X 


Wool  and 
Piece  and 
Double 
Dyeing 


Warp  and 
Weft 


Elementary 
Weave 


Warping 


DYEING 

Some  yarns  are  dyed  after  they  have  been  spun.  In  most  cases, 
however,  woolen  yarns  receive  their  color  after  the  wool  is  scoured  and 
before  it  goes  into  the  carding  machine.  In  worsted  manufacture  the 
common  procedure  is  to  dye  the  top  after  it  has  been  combed.  In  this 
way  a  uniform  color  is  obtained,  whereas  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to 
obtain  the  same  color  from  two  vats  in  piece-dyeing.  Some  materials 
are  both  wool  and  piece-dyed,  the  second  dye  being  given  to  the  cloth. 
This  is  done  in  cases  where  a  peculiarly  fast  color  is  desired,  or  where 
the  cloth  contains  separate  materials  such  as  wool  and  cotton. 

CHAPTER  XI 

WORSTED  WEAVING 

The  modern  power  loom  represents  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
achievements  of  industrial  development.  Into  its  perfection  have  gone 
the  inventions  and  improvements  of  centuries,  and  volumes  could,  and 
have  been  written  on  the  subject  of  modern  weaving.  Nevertheless,  the 
old-fashioned  hand-loom  has  not  yet  gone  out  of  existence,  and  still 
finds  its  use  in  the  development  of  new  designs. 

Weaving  is,  of  course,  the  process  whereby  yarn  is  made  into  cloth, 
and  its  fundamental  principle  is  that  of  the  warp  and  weft  structure. 
In  its  simplest  form  this  means  that  a  series  of  threads  are  stretched 
parallel  to  each  other,  thereby  forming  a  warp.  A  second  thread,  called 
the  weft,  is  then  passed  over  the  odd  and  under  the  even  warp  threads, 
and  back  again  under  the  odd  and  over  the  even.  In  this  way  a  cloth 
fabric  will  gradually  be  built  up.  In  most  cases  the  process  has  become 
considerably  more  complicated  than  this,  but  there  are  even  now  cer- 
tain materials,  such  as  calico,  which  retain  the  elementary  weave.  The 
actual  weaving,  that  is,  the  passing  of  the  shuttle  carrying  the  weft 
thread  over  and  under  the  warp  threads,  has  now  been  reduced  to  an 
entirely  automatic  process,  even  with  the  most  complicated  designs,  but 
the  preparatory  work  still  entails  a  large  proportion  of  hand  labor. 

The  work  which  has  to  be  done  before  the  loom  can  begin  to  operate 
is  usually  referred  to  as  loom-mounting,  and  consists  of  five  stages. 

1.  Warping  is  the  arranging  of  the  warp  threads  in  the  order  neces- 
sary to  produce  the  desired  cloth.  This  was  formerly,  and  still  is  to  a 
great  extent,  done  entirely  by  hand  on  a  sort  of  rack  known  as  the  woof. 
In  the  larger  mills,  however,  warping  is  now  done  either  on  a  sectional 
warping  machine  or  on  the  warping  mill.  Both  these  devices  are  only 
partly  automatic,  and  require  highly-skilled  labor. 


26 


2.  The  mechanical  structure  of  woolen  or  worsted  yarns  necessitates 
the  application  of  some  glutinous  substance  to  their  surfaces  before 
subjecting  them  to  the  weaving  process.  No  matter  how  even  the  wor- 
sted yarn,  a  microscopic  examination  would  show  certain  fibres  pro- 
truding from  the  surface.  Sizing  has  the  effect  of  smoothing  the  surface 
of  the  yarn,  and  at  the  same  time  distributing  more  evenly  the  strain  of  lzms 
weaving.  The  sizing  machine  is  rather  like  the  back-washer  used  in  the 


Drawing  in  the  warp  threads 

manufacturing  of  worsted  yarn.  The  warp  is  run  through  the  sizing 
bath  and  then  compressed  between  rollers,  after  which  it  is  dried  by 
steam  or  fan. 

3.  Beaming  is  the  term  applied  to  winding  the  warp  upon  the  beam 

of  the  loom.     (The  beam  is  the  roller  from  which  the  warp  threads  are    Beaming 
unwound  as  the  weaving  progresses.)     In  order  to  keep  the  threads  in 
their  proper  position  an  instrument  known  as  a  raddle  is  employed,  and 
the  raddling  process  is  one  which  requires  considerable  care. 

4.  The  next  step,  healding,  can  only  be  understood  if  we  anticipate   Healding 
for  the  moment  and  consider  the  structure  of  the  loom.     It  is  necessary 

that  the  warp  threads  be  lifted  in  sections  in  order  that  the  shuttle  may 


(271 


pass  under  some  and  over  others.  From  the  original  weave  of  lifting 
alternate  threads,  a  great  many  complicated  designs  have  been  evolved, 
which  necessitate  the  lifting  of  the  warp  threads  in  many  small  series. 
In  the  elementary  weave  where  there  are  only  two  groups,  this  work  is 
done  by  heald-wires  which  raise  the  odd  and  depress  the  even  threads, 
thus  forming  a  V,  known  as  the  shed,  through  which  the  shuttle  may 
pass.  As  the  design  becomes  more  intricate  the  healding  process  be- 


Sleying 


Weaving 

comes  more  complicated,  and  the  number  of  heald  shafts  increases. 
Each  wire  has  a  hole  in  the  middle  through  which  its  thread  is  passed, 
and  the  proper  threading  of  these  wires  is  known  as  healding. 

5.  Sleying,  or  reeding,  is  the  final  preparatory  process,  and  has  the 
object  of  keeping  the  warp  threads  the  proper  distance  apart  during 
weaving.  The  sley  is  really  nothing  more  than  a  fine  comb  with  a  strip 


J28 


' 


across  the  ends  of  the  teeth.  The  warp  threads  are  passed  between  the 
wires  (reeds)  of  the  sley  and  are  so  compelled  to  keep  their  proper 
position. 

The  sley  is  attached  to  the  batten,  or  fly,  and  performs  the  additional 
function  of  driving  home  each  weft  thread  after  the  shuttle  has  passed. 

Sleying  is  closely  akin  to  healding,  and  both  operations  require  great 
skill  and  care. 

We  have  gone  into  these  preliminary  processes  at  some  length,  first, 
because  they  are  extremely  important,  and  second,  because  in  this  man- 
ner we  are  able  to  obtain  perhaps  a  clearer  picture  of  the  loom  than  if 
we  attempted  to  describe  this  highly  complicated  piece  of  mechanism  in 
detail.  Once  these  processes  have  been  completed  the  remainder  is  al- 
most entirely  automatic.  The  shuttle  flies  back  and  forth  without  aid. 
The  proper  warp  threads  are  raised  and  lowered  to  let  it  pass,  and  after  The  Power 
each  traverse,  or  pick,  the  batten  automatically  drives  home  the  weft  Loom 
thread,  into  the  growing  stretch  of  cloth  that  is  winding  itself  up  on  to 
the  beam  at  one  end,  while  the  beam  at  the  other  end  delivers  the  paral- 
lel warp  threads.  The  motions  are  so  many  and  so  swift  that  the  eye 
fails  to  catch  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  them.  The  average  worsted 
loom  makes  about  100  picks  per  minute,  and  a  calico  loom  runs  almost 
twice  as  fast.  Yet  the  breaking  of  a  single  thread  will  bring  the  loom 
to  a  standstill. 


CHAPTER  XII 


WORSTED  FINISHING 

While,  as  we  shall  see,  finishing  in  the  woolen  industry  is  a  very  im- 
portant stage  of  manufacture,  worsted  materials  are  practically  un- 
changed after  they  come  out  of  the  loom.  There  is  sometimes  a  certain 
amount  of  fulling  and  raising  and  cropping,  but  the  net  result  does  not 
in  any  way  alter  the  cloth,  except  perhaps  to  impart  a  little  smoother 
finish.  We  shall  discuss  finishing  in  a  little  more  detail  when  we  come 
to  the  last  stage  of  woolen  manufacture. 

Our  worsted  cloth  is  now  finished,  and  we  have  traced  its  origin, 
somewhat  sketchily,  from  the  back  of  the  sheep  up  to  the  point  where 
it  takes  only  a  tailor  to  put  it  on  the  back  of  a  man. 


PART  THREE 

WOOLEN  MANUFACTURE 


Woolen  card.     Feed  end 


Woolen  card.     Condenser  end 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  WOOLEN  YARN 

We  have  taken  the  worsted  industry  first,  not  because  it  is  necessarily 
any  more  important  than  woolen  manufacture,  but  because  its  processes 
are  more  complicated,  and  therefore,  if  we  have  gained  a  certain  amount 
of  familiarity  with  them,  we  are  able  to  take  up  the  sister  industry  in  a 
more  abbreviated  manner.  Although,  at  the  present  time,  the  demand 
for  worsted  materials  is  a  great  deal  heavier  than  the  demand  for 
woolens,  the  woolen  industry  is  by  far  the  older  of  the  two,  and  may 
rightfully  claim  that  the  worsted  branch  is  really  an  off -shoot  of  its  tree. 
Moreover,  while  broadcloth  and  similar  materials  no  longer  enjoy  their 
erstwhile  popularity,  there  is  still  a  tremendous  demand  for  other  pro- 
ducts of  the  woolen  industry  such  as  blankets,  flannels,  overcoatings, 
etc.  And  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  most  of  the  cheaper  clothing  ma- 
terials are  woolens. 

In  the  sorting  of  wool  we  saw  that  the  shorter  staples  were  classed  as 
clothing  wools.  To  these  must  be  added  the  noils  from  worsted  combing, 
yarn  waste,  and  wool  reclaimed  from  off-sorts,  as  well  as  wool  extract 
made  from  rags,  before  we  have  the  raw  material  for  the  woolen  in- 
dustry. 

Whereas  we  found  that  combing  wool  had  to  be  left  in  the  grease  until 
it  could  be  carded  immediately  after  scouring,  the  maker  of  woolen  yarn 
will  buy  wool  that  has  been  scoured  months  before.  Most  of  the  wool 
that  is  scoured  by  or  near  the  growers  finds  its  way  into  the  woolen  in- 
dustry for  this  reason.  The  scouring  given  to  clothing  wool  varies  only 
in  that  it  is  more  violent  than  that  given  to  combing  wool,  and  in  that  it 
is  frequently  augmented  by  carbonization  to  remove  vegetable  matter. 

The  first  process  after  scouring  is  blending.  When  the  desired  mixture 
of  various  grades,  kinds,  and  colors  of  wool,  wool  extract,  or  cotton  has 
been  effected,  the  resulting  heterogeneous  mass  is  put  through  the  first 
of  several  carding  processes. 

From  now  on  the  desire  of  the  woolen  yarn  manufacturer  is  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  that  of  the  worsted  comber.  He  wants  to  open  out  the 
fibres,  but  he  wants  them  to  lie  in  all  directions.  He  does  not  want  uni- 
formity. He  wants  just  the  opposite.  His  yarn  must  have  a  certain 
amount  of  strength,  but  it  must  have,  first  of  all,  felting  properties,  so 
that  when  the  cloth  is  finished  the  various  threads  will  merge  and  inter- 
lock. As  might  be  expected,  therefore,  the  carding  process  is  very  much 
more  violent. 

The  blend  is  first  put  through  a  fearnought  which  might  be  described 
briefly  as  the  most  pitiless  member  of  the  card  family.  It  is  also  known 


Raw 
Material 


Scouring 


Blending 


Fibres  not 
parallel  as 
in  Worsted 


[331 


as  a  tenter-hook-willy,  from  the  reversed  position  of  its  teeth.  From  this 
machine  the  wool  goes  through  the  card  proper,  which  is  similar  to  the 

Carding  worsted  card  except  that  the  rollers  go  in  opposite  directions,  instead  of 

in  the  same  directions.  Here,  again,  the  doffer  lifts  the  wool  off  in  a 
continuous  filmy  sheet  and  delivers  it  to  the  condenser.  The  sheet  is 
not  simply  drawn  through  a  funnel  into  a  single  thick  sliver,  but  is 

Condenser  forced    between    rollers    into    two    leather    rubbing    aprons    which    by 

pressure  and  friction  reduce  it  to  a  series  of  small  soft  flabby  slivers, 
having  just  enough  adhesiveness  to  permit  of  muTespmning. 

The  fibres  in  these  slivers  may  be  of  all  lengths  and  degrees  of  fine- 
ness, and  they  lie  in  all  directions. 

There  are  now  no  elaborate  drawing  or  combing  processes.  All  that 
remains  to  be  done  before  we  have  a  weavable  woolen  yarn  is  a  certain 
amount  of  twisting  and  attenuation.  Both  these  results  are  obtained  at 
once  in  the  mule. 

Mule  In  a  woolen  mule  the  spools  of  sliver  are  placed  in  a  fixed  frame,  and 

Spinning  the  sliver  passes  between  a  pair  of  rollers  to  the  spindles.   These  stand, 

slightly  inclined  backwards,  in  a  long  row  upon  the  movable  carriage. 
At  first  the  spindle  tips  are  close  to  the  rollers.  The  sliver  is  paid  out, 


Mule  Spinning 


J341 


and  at  the  same  time  the  carriage  bearing  the  revolving  spindles  retreats. 
During  this  time  no  yarn  is  wound  on  the  bobbins,  but  the  slivers  are 
being  twisted.  Then  the  rollers  cease  to  pay  our  sliver,  the  carriage 
moves  out  a  little  further,  and  the  spindles  rotate  faster,  so  that  the  yarn 
is  being  twisted  and  stretched.  When  sufficient  twist  has  been  imparted 
the  carriage  moves  back  again  and  the  spindles  wind  up  the  twisted  yarn 
on  to  the  bobbins.  This,  briefly,  is  the  operation  of  the  mule.  There  are 
a  great  many  intricate  devices  in  this  machine  which  deserve  attention, 
but  which  hardly  fall  within  our  scope.  All  that  remains  now  is  to  wind 
the  yarn  on  spools,  or  skein  it,  before  it  is  ready  for  the  weaver. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  WOOLEN  CLOTH 


There  are  many  differences  between  weaving  worsteds  and  woolens, 
but  for  our  purposes  we  may  consider  the  process  the  same,  as  in  a 
general  way  it  is.     Some  cloths  are  woven  with  a  cotton  warp  and  a  Weaving 
woolen  yarn  filling,  the  warp  being  carefully  concealed.  Woolen  cloths 
are  more  frequently  woven  with  a  backing  than  worsteds.    This  means 


Burling  and  mending 


1351 


Finishing 
Important 
in  Woolens 


that  either  there  is  a  double  warp,  a  double  weft,  or  both.  The  object 
of  backing  is  usually  to  add  strength  and  warmth  to  the  material,  and 
the  lower  side  is  therefore  often  woven  of  coarser  yarn.  In  some  cases, 
however,  notably  in  travelling  rugs,  the  backing  may  be  just  as 
elaborate  as  the  face,  and  this  necessitates  a  rather  intricate  mounting 
process. 

Carpets  Carpet  weaving  is  one  of  the  large  branches  of  the  woolen  industry, 

and  for  this  purpose  the  coarsest  and  longest  fibred  wools  (common, 
braid,  and  carpet  wools)  are  usually  employed.  These  wools  readily 
lend  themselves  to  the  manufacture  of  a  coarse  thick  yarn,  which  in  turn 
produces  a  thick,  durable  material.  The  thickness  of  a  carpet  is  known 
as  the  pile. 

Whereas  we  saw  that  the  worsted  cloth  was  practically  finished  when 
it  left  the  loom,  this  is  not  the  case  with  woolens.  Oftentimes  it  would 
tax  an  expert  to  identify  the  finished  goods  with  the  loose  and  altogether 
different  material  produced  by  the  weaver.  Some  fine  woolens,  it  is  true, 
are  scarcely  altered  more  than  worsteds,  but  in  most  cases  the  finishing 
operations  are  in  this  industry  a  major  rather  than  a  subsidiary  stage  of 
manufacture.  The  reader  may  have  been  puzzled  at  the  divergent  lines 
along  which  woolen  and  worsted  yarns  are  manufactured,  and  at  a  loss 
to  account  for  the  reasons.  The  cause  is  precisely  this,  that  the  worsted 
manufacturer  aims  to  produce  a  cloth  that  is  completed  when  woven, 
while  the  woolen  maker  wants  his  loom  to  turn  out  a  material  that  will 
readily  adopt  a  great  variety  of  finishes. 

The  first  finishing  operation,  which  applies  also  to  worsteds,  is  the 

Burling  examination  of  the  piece  for  imperfections  and  the  removing  of  them  by 

hand.  The  piece  is  then  scoured  to  get  rid  of  dirt,  and,  where  the  finish 
is  complicated,  this  may  be  repeated  several  times. 

Fulling  i      Fulling,  the  next  and  very  important  process,  consists  in  passing  the 

I  material  through  closed  or  partially  enclosed  boxes,  in  which  the  cloth 
I  is  run  through  soap  solutions  and  then  forced  through  rollers.  The  re- 
l  suit  of  fulling  is  to  shrink  the  material  and  give  more  body  to  it.  It  is 
chiefly  in  order  to  be  able  to  do  this  that  the  maker  of  woolens  wants  the 
fibres  in  his  yarn  to  lie  criss-cross,  so  that  in  the  fulling  mill  their  ser- 
rated edges  will  felt  and  interlock  with  each  other.  The  amount  of  full- 
ing done  depends  upon  the  shrinkage  desired.  It  is  possible  to  reduce 
the  size  of  the  cloth  by  half  in  this  process.  Some  worsteds  are  slightly 
fulled,  but  in  their  case  it  simply  serves  to  add  a  little  body  to  the  cloth, 
without  in  any  way  sacrificing  the  design  of  the  weaving.  Long  before 
the  invention  of  even  the  earliest  textile  machinery  there  were  great 
numbers  of  water-driven  fulling  mills,  in  which  the  woolen  cloth  was 
pounded  in  fuller's  earth  by  wooden  hammers.  In  those  days  the  cloth 
was  felted  into  a  stiff  thick  mass  which  would  resist  wear  almost  inde- 


J361 


[finitely,  but  which  would  hardly  adapt  itself  to  modern  stream-line 
tailoring. 

The  fulled  piece  is  next  made  to  revolve  on  a  large  drum  set  with 
teazle-heads.  The  object  of  this  procedure  is  to  open  out  the  fibres,  and 
I  the  process  is  known  as  raising.  In  worsteds  and  fancy  woolens,  such  as  Raising 
trouserings,  raising  is  really  nothing  more  than  the  brushing  up  of  the 
loose  fibres  so  that  they  may  be  cropped  off,  much  as  grass  is  cut  on  a 
lawn.  This  will  of  course  have  the  effect  of  showing  up  the  weave  very 
plainly.  In  most  woolens,  however,  the  cloth  is  raised  wet,  and  the 
teazle  motion  is  more  violent,  so  that  the  entire  surface  is  covered  with  a 
thick  nap  of  brushed  up  fibres  which  entirely  conceal  the  weave.  This  is 
often  very  desirable  where  coarse  backing  threads  are  to  be  hidden,  or 
where,  for  other  reasons,  a  thick  nap  is  desired,  as  for  instance  in  rough 


Fulling 


Cropping  overcoatings.    There  may  be  several  raisings  and  croppings,  between 

which  the  material  is  boiled  and  pressed,  all  depending  on  the  character 
of  the  face  that  is  desired.  In  some  cloths  the  finishing  processes  are 
exceedingly  complicated,  particularly  where  a  smooth  finish  such  as 
doeskin  is  sought.  The  variety  of  finishes  is  infinite  and  new  ones  are 

Pressing  constantly  being  invented,  many  of  which   are  closely  guarded  trade 

secrets.     In  most  cases  pressing  completes  the  process. 

We  have  now  followed  both  the  combing  and  the  clothing  wools 
through  the  process  of  manufacture  into  worsted  and  woolen  yarns  and 
cloths.  Again,  let  us  emphasize  that  the  relative  amount  of  space  devoted 
here  to  the  two  industries  is  governed,  not  by  their  comparative  import- 
ance, but  by  what  appeared  to  be  the  most  concise  method  of  approach. 
Many  details,  which  loom  up  as  tremendous  problems  to  the  manufac- 
turer, have  been  treated  here  with  scant  respect,  and  others  have  not 
even  been  mentioned,  but,  in  a  paper  such  as  this,  which  seeks  to  give 
the  outline  of  so  much  in  so  brief  a  space,  it  is  essential  not  to  lose  sight 
of  the  whole  picture  through  too  close  a  contemplation  of  its  component 
parts. 

CHAPTER  XV 

MOHAIR  AND  ALPACA 

There  are  two  materials  upon  which  we  have  not  touched  at  all,  al- 
though they  are  generally  included  in  wool  manufacture.  Mohair  is  the 
hair  of  the  Angora  goat,  and  has  many  characteristics  of  both  hair  and 
wool.  These  animals  are  nativeto  Asia  Minor,  but  are  now  extensively 

Mohair  raised  in  other  parts  of  the  woTld,  notably  in  Africa  and  in  this  coun- 

try. The  hair  averages  about  four  inches  in  length,  although  It  fre- 
quently grows  much  longer,  is  very  smooth  and  fine,  has  considerable 
tensile  strength,  low  elasticity,  and  practically  no  felting  property.  It 
is  used  primarily  in  the  manufacture  of  plush,  such  as  is  used  in  rail- 
road carriages,  and  makes  very  durable  material.  It  is  also  woven 
into  Palm  Beach  cloth,  or  mixed  with  worsted  or  cotton  yarns  in  such 
fabrics  as  automobile  tops. 

Alrjacajs  a  similar  fibre,  obtained  from  an  animal  native  to  Bolivia^ 
and  Peru.  The  fibre  is  finer  than  mohair,  and  a  little  more  like  wool. 
It  comes  in  three  natural  colors;  white,  brown,  and  black,  all  of  which 

Alpaca  are  f°un(i  on  the  same  fleece.     Alpaca  is  both  light  and  soft,  and  there- 

fore lends  itself  admirably  to  the  manufacture  of  thin  linings. 

CHAPTER  XVI 
KNITTING  AND  FELT  MANUFACTURE 

Whereas  most  yarn  is  woven  into  cloth,  there  is  also  a  second  process, 
known  as  knitting,  in  which  the  individual  threads  are  interlaced  into  a 


38 


regular  fabric  without  warp  and  weft  structure.  The  work  is  performed 
on  a  sort  of  loom,  called  the  stockinette  frame,  upon  which  the  yarns  are 
arranged  in  parallel  order  and  uniform  distances  apart.  The  actual  knit- 
ting closely  resembles  hand  knitting,  and  is  done  entirely  by  automatic 
mechanism.  A  machine  of  this  sort  is  capable  of  turning  out  a  great 
length  of  material  in  a  short  time,  and  the  fabric  has  the  fine  ribbed 
character  seen  in  ordinary  knitted  goods.  The  article  is  soft,  full,  and 
elastic,  but  lacks  the  strength  and  firmness  of  woven  fabrics.  Stockinette 
cloths,  sweaters,  some  underwear,  and  hosiery  are  products  of  the  knit- 
ting machine,  and  the  knitting  mills  are  important  consumers  of  noils 
and  low-grade  wools. 

Besides  being  made  into  yarn,  and  woven  or  knit  into  goods,  wool  is 
also  compressed  into  felts  of  various  kinds.  Space  unfortunately  is 
lacking  for  the  consideration  of  this  subject  here,  although  a  consid- 
erable quantity  of  wool  goes  into  felt  manufacture. 


Stockinette 
Frame 


Felt 


Steaming 


J391 


Cropping 


PART  FOUR 

THE  FINANCIAL  ASPECT 


Banks 


Sheep 
Risks 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Bearing  in  mind  the  industrial  structure  we  have  just  outlined,  it 
might  be  well  for  us  to  glance  briefly  at  its  financial  scaffolding.  From 
the  banker's  point  of  view  there  are  many  features  which  are  distinctive 
of  the  wool  trade,  and  which  exercise  an  important  bearing  upon  the 
judgment  of  a  credit  risk. 

To  begin  with  the  grower,  we  find  here  that  in  many  instances  the  Sheep 
large  raisers  of  sheep  have  built  up  their  own  banks.  In  Texas,  for  in- 
stance, there  are  a  considerable  number  of  banks  whose  chief  business 
consists  in  financing  the  wool  clips  of  their  sections.  On  the  other  ex- 
treme we  have  the  small  grower  of  the  East,  who  is  frequently  at  the 
mercy  of  the  local  storekeeper.  Where  wool  growing  is  practised  on  a 
large  scale  in  this  country  the  tendency  is  more  and  more  to  reduce  the 
business  to  a  scientifically  standardized  scale,  in  such  a  manner  as  is 
prevalent  in  Australia.  The  more  this  is  done  the  more  independent  the 
grower  becomes,  and  the  easier  it  is  for  a  bank  to  determine  the  strength 
of  the  individual  risk.  The  sheep  raiser  has  of  course  one  primary  asset, 
his  flocks;  and  if  he  is  compelled  to  borrow,  the  security  behind  his  note 
rests  upon  his  sheep.  In  making  a  loan  to  a  sheep  man  a  bank  has  to  con- 
sider not  only  the  market  value  of  the  animals,  but  the  conditions  under 
which  they  are  being  raised.  Sheep  are  affected  by  droughts,  for  in- 
stance, and  many  flocks  have  been  ravaged  by  predatory  animals,  or 
decimated  by  disease.  Any  one  of  these  contingencies  may  at  any  moment 
destroy  or  depreciate  the  bank's  collateral,  and  for  this  reason  borrow- 
ing of  this  sort  is  confined  very  largely  to  banks  situated  in  sheep-grow- 
ing sections  which  specialize  in  this  form  of  loan. 

It  would  be  of  great  interest  to  figure  the  average  cost  of  production 
per  pound  of  wool  to  the  grower,  but,  with  the  varying  conditions  en- 
countered in  different  parts  of  the  country  and  with  sundry  breeds,  an 
accurate  estimate  can  hardly  be  arrived  at.  Even  the  cost  of  shearing  is 
variously  figured  from  ten  to  nearly  thirty  cents.  Generally  speaking, 
however,  the  grower  needs  very  little  financial  assistance,  because  he  is  Growers 
able  to  sell  his  entire  clip  for  cash.  The  buyers  representing  merchants  st 
— or  in  a  few  cases,  mills — are  prepared  to  pay  cash  for  their  wool,  and 
in  some  cases  where  they  feel  sure  of  a  rising  market,  often  go  so  far  as 
to  buy  the  wool  on  the  sheep's  back  before  it  is  shorn.  Provided  the 
grower  knows  something  about  wool,  and  the  existing  demand,  there  is 
no  reason  why,  from  the  proceeds  of  one  clip,  he  should  not  be  able  to 
meet  his  costs  up  to  the  time  of  the  next  shearing. 

The  merchant  is  up  against  a  very  different  proposition.    As  we  have    The  Merchant 
seen,  he  buys  for  cash,  and  not  only  sells  on  credit,  but  carries  a  large 
proportion  of  what  he  buys  for  several  months,  before  he  can  dispose  of 
it.  There  are  so  many  kinds  of  wool  merchants  that  it  is  almost  impos- 


sible  to  make  any  general  observations.  One  merchant,  for  example,  may 
specialize  entirely  in  domestic  wools;  in  that  case  he  would  do  all  his 
buying  in  the  spring  months  and  would  gradually  dispose  of  his  ma- 
terial, having  first  graded  it,  during  the  remainder  of  the  year.  Another 
house  might  do  the  bulk  of  its  business  in  South  American  wools,  which 
would  mean  a  fall  purchasing  season.  Still  another  would  handle  both 
domestic  and  South  American,  and  a  fourth  might  import  from  all  parts 
of  the  world,  so  that  buying  and  selling  would  be  going  on  continuously 
and  at  the  same  time  throughout  the  year.  The  credit  requirements  of  the 
first  two  houses  would  be  an  easier  demand  upon  the  bank  than  those  of 
the  latter,  but  in  all  cases  the  judging  of  the  risk  involves  certain  prim- 
ary considerations,  each  of  which  really  necessitates  the  close  study  of 
the  individual  case. 

Futures  A  wool  merchant's  business  is  largely  based  on  his  estimate  of  the 

future.  Were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  he  assumes  a  risk  which  neither  the 
grower  nor,  in  most  cases,  the  manufacturer  is  able  to  take,  he  could  not 
maintain  his  position  as  the  middleman.  The  merchant's  buyer  must,  as 
we  have  seen,  be  able  to  judge  the  amount  of  shrinkage  within  a  very 
small  fraction,  he  must  know  the  demand  for  each  quality  of  wool  so 
that  he  may  be  sure  not  to  pay  more  than  he  can  sell  for,  and,  what  is 
more,  he  must  be  able  to  forecast  the  future  with  a  certain  amount  of  ac- 
curacy in  order  to  make  his  profit.  Furthermore,  the  merchant  must  be 
constantly  on  his  guard  against  doing  more  business  than  his  capital 
warrants,  while  at  the  same  time,  unless  he  makes  every  dollar  work,  his 
business  will  in  normal  times  fail  to  show  him  a  profit.  All  these  things 
depend  almost  entirely  upon  the  individual's  character  and  ability,  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact  loans  made  by  Boston  banks  to  the  big  wool  mer- 
chants are  based  far  more  upon  the  moral  risk  than  in  most  other  lines. 
Many  of  the  large  dealers  operate  as  partnerships,  and  here  again  is  a 
factor  which  makes  for  individual  judgments  rather  than  for  any  fixed 
standard.  The  largest  houses  borrow  at  times  in  the  open  market,  but  a 
great  part  of  the  wool  financing  is  done  by  the  banks  in  the  wool  centers, 

Wool  such  as  Boston.  Some  of  these  loans  are  made  on  straight  notes,  but  an 

Financing  ever-increasing  quantity  are  on  the  acceptance  basis.  Practically  all  the 

foreign  wool  imported  through  Boston  is  financed  by  letters  of  credit, 
the  raw  wool  being  released  in  many  cases  under  trust  receipt  and  sold 
for  manufacture.  Domestic  shipments  are  also  being  handled  more  on 
acceptance  agreements  than  formerly,  although  the  old-fashioned  draft 
shipment  is  still  generally  in  vogue. 

There  are  a  few  tangible  elements  which  make  for  a  good  or  bad  risk, 
chief  among  which  is  the  matter  of  collections.    The  mills  to  which  a 

Collection  merchant  sells  are  often  a  very  good  criterion  of  his  business  methods 

and  trade  standing,  and  the  amount  of  slow  accounts  is  frequently  a  very 
useful  barometer. 


Credit 
Risks 


1441 


Some  wool  dealers  have  become  considerably  more  than  middlemen,    Merchant 
and  have  gone  quite  extensively  into  the  first  stages  of  manufacture.  This    Manufac- 
is  particularly  true  of  some  of  the  large  Boston  houses  which  of  recent    ' 
years  have  established  top  manufacturing  departments,  and  which  there- 
fore sell  a  large  proportion  of  their  goods  not  as  raw  wool  but  as  tops 
and  noil. 

Although  the  dealers  do  the  bulk  of  the  commission  work  in  consign- 
ment sales,  there  are  a  great  number  of  brokers  whose  function  is  prim-  Brokers 
arily  the  buying  and  selling  for  account  of  others.  These  houses  usually 
operate  with  a  limited  capital,  and  are  not  extensive  seekers  of  credit. 
The  important  factor  in  judging  a  risk  of  this  nature  is  to  make  sure  that 
such  a  house  is  confining  its  activities  to  brokerage  and  is  not  speculat- 
ing on  its  own  account. 

So  far  as  the  manufacturers,  or  mills  of  various  sorts,  are  concerned,  Mills 
there  is  nothing  essentially  different  about  these  risks  from  others  in 
similar  lines.  While  the  moral  risk  is  important,  there  is  usually  plenty 
of  information  available  to  the  banker,  in  regard  to  the  capitalization, 
earnings,  gross  business,  costs,  assets,  and  liabilities.  There  is  one  strik- 
ing difference  about  the  paper  of  woolen  and  worsted  mills  as  against 
cotton  mill  notes  which  appear  in  the  open  market;  cotton  mill  paper, 
except  in  the  case  of  the  strongest  mills,  usually  bears  the  endorsement 
of  the  commission  house  which  sells  the  mill's  products,  but  this  is  not 
the  case  with  woolen  and  worsted  mill  paper  as  a  rule.  The  reason  for 
this  is  that  a  large  number  of  the  wool  manufacturing  establishments 
sell  direct  to  wholesalers  and  jobbers,  and  have  no  close  affiliation  with 
a  selling-house. 

Trade  terms  vary  a  good  deal.  Raw  wool  is  almost  invariably  sold  for    Trade 
cash  by  the  grower.  Dealers  make  various  terms  to  mills,  the  most  usual    Terms 
being  \%  ten  days,  sixty  days  net.  The  terms  on  which  mills  sell  to  job- 
bers also  have  a  wide  range;   some  sell  thirty  days  net,  some   10% 
thirty  days,  others  1%  four  months. 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

INDUSTRIAL  ORGANIZATION  AND  COSTS 

While  any  analysis  of  costs,  even  were  it  made  by  an  expert,  would 
undoubtedly  occasion  considerable  argument  and  criticism,  it  might 
be  well  to  cast  a  passing  glance  at  the  distribution  of  processes  and 
costs  in  wool  manufacture. 

The  costs  of  growing  and  shearing  the  wool  is,  as  we  have  seen,    Cost 
borne  by  the  grower.  What  the  cost  is  we  cannot  even  estimate,  because   Sketch 
of    the    wide    variation    of    geographical    and    temporary    conditions. 
Whatever  the  amount,  the  price  paid  for  raw  wool  by  the  merchant 


Greater 
Subdivision 
in   Worsted 
Industry 


covers  it,  as  well  as  the  grower's  profit.  Let  us  call  it  80  cents  per 
pound  in  the  grease. 

The  merchant  grades  the  wool  and  sells  it  to  the  woolen  manufac- 
turer at,  let  us  say,  90  cents  per  pound,  which  covers  his  cost  and 
profit.  Assuming  that  the  manufacturer  does  his  own  scouring,  he 
will  then  find,  if  the  wool  shrinks  60%,  that  he  has  paid  $2.25  per 
pound  of  scoured  wool,  to  which  must  be  added  about  seven  cents 
to  cover  the  cost  of  scouring. 

The  cost  of  carding  and  spinning  depends  upon  the  size  of  the 
yarn  and  varies  from  about  $.12  to  about  $.45  per  pound  of  yarn. 

Weaving,  including  all  costs  of  labor  and  overhead,  will  then  cost 
from  $.08  to  $.37  cents  per  yard  depending  upon  the  number  of  picks 
the  loom  makes  for  each  inch  of  fabric  produced. 

Assuming  that  it  takes  a  pound  of  yarn  to  make  a  yard  of  cloth,  and 
that  it  takes  a  pound  and  a  fraction  of  scoured  wool  to  make  a  pound 
of  yarn,  we  then  have: 


Wool    

Conversion  to  yarn 

Net  waste   

Dyeing     

Weaving    


$2.25 
.30 
.20 
.15 


$3.15 

If  we  then  add  $.26  a  yard  arbitrarily  as  the  cost  of  finishing,  pack- 
ing, etc.,  we  find  that  we  have  an  all  woolen  cloth  at  $3.41  per  yard. 
Selling  expense  and  profits  of  mill  and  jobber  would  bring  it  up  to 
about  $4.70.  A  suit  made  out  of  this  cloth  would  probably  cost  in  the 
neighborhood  of  $65.00  ready  made,  of  which  only  about  24%  would 
be  for  the  cloth.  Of  this  24%  nearly  50%  would  be  for  raw  material. 
It  is  easy  to  see  from  this  cost  sketch  that  the  high  price  of  a  suit  of 
clothes  is  only  slightly  brought  about  by  scarcity  of  raw  material  and 
high  cost  of  mill  operation,  and  that  the  chief  rise  has  come  in  the 
making  of  the  cloth  into  clothes. 

There  is  a  tendency  to  far  greater  industrial  subdivision  in  the 
worsted  industry  than  in  woolens.  As  a  general  rule  the  maker  of 
woolens  buys  his  wool  scoured,  or  has  it  scoured  on  commission.  He 
then  makes  his  own  woolen  yarn  either  out  of  wool  or  shoddy,  or  a 
mixture  of  both,  or  both  and  cotton.  Usually  the  only  thing  he  buys 
outside  of  his  raw  material  is  cotton  yarn,  if  he  uses  this  in  some 
of  his  fabrics. 

In  the  worsted  industry  there  are  generally  a  greater  number  of 
separate  units.  The  top-maker,  frequently  the  merchant,  scours  the 
wool  and  cards  and  combs  it.  He  then  sells  his  top  to  the  spinner  of 


J461 


worsted  yarn.  The  spinner  is  usually  not  the  ultimate  manufacturer, 
but  is  either  an  independent  maker  of  yarn,  or  else  spins  on  commis- 
sion for  the  manufacturer.  Some  of  the  very  large  worsted  manufac- 
turers begin  with  the  raw  material  and  carry  it  through  to  the  finished 
product,  but  it  can  be  readily  seen  that  this  procedure  involves  a 
very  large  plant.  In  most  cases  the  manufacturer  buys  his  yarn  as 
he  needs  it.  The  cost  analysis  is  therefore  more  complicated  and 
contains  a  greater  number  of  profits  or  commissions,  and  this,  to- 
gether with  the  higher  cost  of  raw  material  and  of  manufacture, 
makes  a  worsted  cloth  a  little  more  expensive  than  the  corresponding 
grade  of  woolen.  However,  even  if  it  costs  one-third  more,  this  will 
only  mean  a  matter  of  about  four  dollars  in  the  cost  of  the  suit.  This 
is  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  great  demand  for  worsted  clothing. 

CHAPTER  XIX 

DEMAND  AND  SUPPLY 

Sheep  raising  is,  as  we  have  seen,  chiefly  carried  on  on  the  border- 
lines of  civilization.     As  civilized  life  encroaches  upon  the  pasture 
lands  the  flocks  are  driven  gradually  further  and  further  into  hitherto 
uninhabitated   regions.     The  population   of  the  world  is  steadily  in- 
creasing, and  the  available  grazing  areas  are  constantly  being  reduced 
as  the  world  becomes  more  thickly  populated.    Also,  as  the  population   Supply 
increases,  the  demand  for  clothing  and  food  increases,  so  that,  on  the   DecreasmS? 
face  of  it,  it  would  seem  that  the  production  of  wool  would  decrease 
while  the  demand  grew  constantly  larger.     In  a  measure  this  is  true; 
but   there   are  several    factors   which   tend  to   arrest   this   Malthusian 
spectre.     In  the  first  place,  there  are  still  vast  areas  of  desert  land   Demand 
which  can  be  reclaimed  for  grazing  purposes.     In  the  second  place  the   Increasing? 
growing  of  wool  in  most  countries  is  as  yet  practiced  on  a  very  crude 
and  consequently  uneconomical  scale.    And,  finally,  the  use  of  shoddy 
and  wool  regained  from  rags,  has  only  begun  to  be  developed.     Nor 
is  it  true  that  sheep  must  necessarily  be  raised  in  uncultivated  regions; 
England,    with    her   closely    settled    soil,    supports    about    three-fifths 
as  many   sheep   as   the   United   States,   on   an    area   of  only    121,377 
square  miles,  as  against  the  3,026,789  square  miles  in  this  country. 

According  to  the  latest  available  figures  there  are  about  580  million 
sheep  in  the  world  of  which  North  America  has  57,  South  America 
72,  Europe  182,  Asia  97,  Africa  60,  and  Australasia  112.  In  1918  Sheep 
there  were  estimated  to  be  592  million,  and  in  1917,  605  million.  The 
high  point  in  the  United  States  was  reached  in  1884,  when  there  were 
estimated  to  be  51  million  sheep,  as  against  slightly  under  50  millions 
now. 


J471 


These  figures  are,  of  course,  difficult  to  obtain,  and  even  more  so  are 
Wool  those  relating  to  wool  production.  The  world's  total  output  in  1919  is 

estimated  at  two  billion,  eight  hundred  and  ninety-four  million  pounds. 
North  America  336  million,  South  America  485,  Europe  772,  Asia  326, 
Africa  150,  Australasia  825.  Whether  this  is  an  actual  increase  or 
decrease  cannot  as  yet  be  determined  on  account  of  the  War. 

Although  the  effect  of  the  War  is  not  definitely  known  as  yet  so  far 
as  the  number  of  sheep  and  the  production  of  wool  are  concerned, 
its  influence  is  very  plainly  discernible  in  the  price  scales.  Just  as  the 
Civil  War  brought  about  an  enormous  rise  in  wool  prices,  so  also 
this  last  struggle  left  its  mark.  Due  to  the  complete  disruption  of 
many  industries,  the  stimulated  demand  for  clothing,  and  the  general 


WOOL  PRODUCT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


Year 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 
1901 
1902 
1903 
1904 
1905 
1906 
1907 


Year 
1896 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 
1901 
1902 
1903 
1904 
1905 
1906 

Present  inflation   of   prices   consequent   upon   war,   the   last  three   years   have 

Prices  shown    remarkable   fluctuations    in    the    prices    of   various    grades    of 

wool. 

If  we  consider  for  a  moment  that  it  makes  a  difference  of  only  about 
four  dollars  in  the  price  of  a  suit  of  clothes,  whether  it  is  made  of 
the  finest  or  the  coarsest  wool,  it  is  obvious  why,  when  general  infla- 
tion has  carried  the  price  of  a  suit  from  forty  to  eighty  dollars,  even 


$481 


Pounds 

Year 

Pounds 

259,153,251 

1908 

311,138,321 

266,720,684 

1909 

328,110,749 

272,191,330 

1910 

321,362,750 

288,636,621 

1911 

318,547,900 

302,502,382 

1912 

304,043,400 

316,341,032 

1913 

296,175,300 

287,450,000 

1914 

290,192,000 

291,783,032 

1915 

288,777,000 

295,488,438 

1916 

288,498,600 

298,715,130 

1917 

285,573,000 

298,294,750 

1918 

299,921,000 

IMPORTS  OF  WOOL  INTO  THE 

UNITED 

STATES 

Pounds 

Year 

Pounds 

230,911,473 

1907 

203,847,545 

350,852,026 

1908 

125,980,524 

132,795,302 

1909 

266,409,304 

76,736,209 

1910 

263,928,232 

155,918,455 

1911 

137,647,641 

103,583,505 

1912 

193,400,713 

166,576,966 

1913 

195,293,255 

177,137,796 

1914 

247,648,869 

173,742,834 

1915 

308,083,429 

249,135,746 

1916 

534,828,022 

201,688,668 

1917 

372,372,218 

1918 

422,414,985 

the  common  laborer  will  want  the  softer  and  finer-finished  goods 
made  from  half-blood  wool,  rather  than  the  coarse  material  manufac- 
tured out  of  low  quarterbloods.  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  Germany, 
which  before  the  War  was  one  of  the  heaviest  consumers  of  coarse 
wools,  has  been  rendered  incapable  of  purchasing  raw  material,  and 
it  needs  no  further  explanation  to  account  for  the  high  price  com- 
manded by  fine  wools  and  the  cheapness  of  the  coarser  grades.  A 
study  of  the  accompanying  price  table  will  show  the  relative  position 
of  the  prices  of  today. 

So  far  as  the  future  is  concerned,  there  are  so  many  factors  which 
must  be  taken  into  account  that  it  is  impossible  to  hazard  even  a 
guess  as  to  what  the  trend  of  prices  will  be.  It  is  reasonably  certain 
that  the  gap  between  the  present  prices  of  fine  and  coarse  wools  will 
narrow  to  more  normal  proportions.  Whether  the  coarse  wools  will 
appreciate,  or  the  fine  wools  depreciate,  or  both,  is  the  question  that 
every  wool  man  is  at  the  present  trying  to  solve.  It  looks  as  if  it  The  Future? 
would  take  several  years  before  the  machine  famine  can  be  met. 
At  the  present  time  second  hand  textile  machinery  is  worth  more  than 
new  machines  a  few  years  ago,  and  mills  are  willing  to  pay  fabulous 
prices  in  order  to  be  able  to  increase  their  output.  As  long  as  this 
condition  prevails,  the  goods  market  can  hardly  fail  to  maintain  its 
present  high  level,  unless  Europe  can  break  the  price  by  underselling 
the  American  manufacturer  in  his  own  market  or  unless  the  demand 
falls  off  to  a  very  large  extent.  Many  authorities  believe,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  an  era  of  falling  prices  has  set  in  and  that  it  will  affect  cloth- 
ing as  rapidly  as  other  commodities,  so  that  the  whole  question  of 
future  values  and  prices  presents  a  study  beyond  the  scope  of  this 
pamphlet.  For  our  purposes  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  only  the  fact 
that  wool,  as  bank  collateral  express  or  implied,  is  every  bit  as  much 
subject  to  fluctuation  as  stock  exchange  securities.  We  might  compare 
the  coarse  wools  to  the  railroad  stocks;  they  certainly  look  low,  they  Sound 
ought  to  go  up,  and  they  may  go  down.  The  fine  wools  we  might  Judgment 
then  liken  to  the  industrial  shares;  they  look  high,  they  ought  to  go  ^p  °H 
down,  and  they  may  go  up.  In  the  last  analysis  we  know  nothing 
whatsoever  about  it.*  The  best  a  bank  can  do  is  to  decide  which  wool 
merchant  is  able  and  honest,  and  keep  a  fatherly  eye  upon  his  bor- 
rowings to  prevent  his  getting  over-extended.  To  do  this,  however,  is 
not  merely  a  matter  of  forming  a  personal  estimate  of  the  man;  it 
necessitates  a  careful  study  of  his  business  as  well  as  of  his  character. 
Whether  he  is  right  or  wrong  about  the  future,  the  future  alone  knows. 
Whether  he  has  been  right  or  wrong  about  past  futures  is  a  matter  of 
record  to  the  careful  observer. 

Note  for  3rd  edition. 

*As  a  matter  of  fact  the  gap  did  narrow,  as  every  one  who  follows  the  wool 
market  knows.     Between  April,  1920,  whe'n  this  pamphlet  was  written,  and  the 


present  time,  April,  1921,  fine  wools  have  depreciated  fully  60%  while  the  lower 
grades  have  lost  only  a  comparatively  small  proportion  of  their  value,  so  that 
at  the  present  time  the  difference  between  the  finest  wools  and  common  braid  is 
only  about  30c  on  a  grease  basis,  whereas  a  year  ago  the  spread  amounted  to 
about  $1.00.  3/8  blood  domestic  wool,  to  take  a  rough  barometer,  is  now  selling 
at  just  about  the  27c  level  of  1914. 


PRICES  OF  DOMESTIC  WOOLS.    WASHED  OHIO  FLEECES 

(Cents  per  Boston  pound) 

Fine           Medium  Coarse 

July  1st.                1824               .55               .40  .30 

1834X              .60               .50  .40 

1844)             .45               .37  .32 

1854               .45               .37  .30 

1860\              .55               .50  .40 

1864  1.00             1.00  .90 

1865  .75               .73  .65 
1870               .46               .45  .43 
1875 x             .52               .49  .46 
1880               .46               .48  .42 
1885N              .32               .31  .28 
1890'             .33               .37  .29 
1895               .18               .21  .19 
1900               .28               .31  .27 
1905               .36               .39  .36 
1907               .34               .36  .35 

Since  about  1907  very  little  washed  wool  has  come  to  this  market.  The  follow- 
ing prices  are  quoted  on  an  unwashed  basis  for  the  same  wools,  and  therefore 
represent  about  66%  of  what  washed  prices  would  be. 

Delaine             %  V± 

1913  .225              .235  .235 

1914  .275             .275  .265 

1915  .295             .365  .365 

1916  .345              .410  .400 

1917  .735             .745  .735 

1918  .750             .780  .770 

1919  .800             .650  .650 
Jan.  1.                   1920              .950              .680  .650 

While  it  is  not  feasible  to  give  here  a  price  scale  of  all  varieties  of  wools  the 
above  tabulation  of  Ohio  fleeces  will  give  the  reader  some  idea  of  the  general 
trend. 


DIRECTORS 


lobert  Amory 
Aniory,  Browne  &  Co. 

alvin  Austin 
Pres.  Eastern  Steamship  Lines  Inc. 

Frederick  Ayer 

|dward  E.  Blodgett 

'  Blodgett,  Jones,  Burnham  &  Bingham, 
.  Attorneys 

ioland  W.  Boyden 

^  Ropes,  Gray,  Boyden  &  Perkins, 

F  Attorneys 
eorge  W.  Brown 
Vice  Pres.  United  Shoe  Machinery  Co. 

Earle  P.  Charlton 
Vice  Pres.  F.  W.  Woolworth  Co. 

|arl  P.  Dennett 
Pres.  Massachusetts  Iron  &  Steel  Co. 

George  A.  Draper 
Treasurer  Draper  Corporation, 
Hopedale,  Mass. 

Robert  J.  Edwards 

Wilinot  R.  Evans 
Pres.  Boston  Five  Cents  Savings  Bank 

iff.  Cameron  Forbes 
J.  M.  Forbes  &  Co. 

F.  Abbot  Goodhue 
Pres.  International  Acceptance  Bank,  Inc. 

Levi  H.  Greenwood 
Vice  Pres.  Heywood-Wakefield  Co. 

Frank  J.  Hale 
Saco-Lowell  Shops 


Charles  P.  Hall 

Vice  Pres.  American  Hide  and 
Leather  Co. 

Frank  B.  Hopewell 
L.  C.  Chase  &  Co. 

Herbert  W.  Mason 

Treasurer  S.  D.  Warren  Co. 

Frederic  C.  McDuffie 

Treasurer  York  Mfg.  Company  and 
Everett  Mills 

Everett  Morss 

Pres.  Simplex  Wire  and  Cable  Co. 

Andrew  W.  Preston 

President  United  Fruit  Co. 

C.  G.  Rice 

N.  W.  Rice  Company 

Gifford  K.  Simonds 

Simonds  Mfg.  Co.,  Fitchburg,  Mass. 

Nathaniel  Stevens 

President  M.  T.  Stevens  &  Sons  Co., 
North  Andover,  Mass. 

Albert  B.  Wells 

Treasurer  American  Optical  Co., 
Southbridge,  Mass. 

George  R.  White 

President  Potter  Drug  and  Chemical 
Corporation 

Daniel  G.  Wing 
President 

Sidney  W.  Winslow,  Jr. 

Vice  Pres.  United  Shoe  Machinery  Co, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


FEB   161948 


JUN  10 

13  Oc; 


1918 


9Jan52CFA 


J 


M  AY  2  4  1956  OJ 


REC  D  LD 

JAN  12  1959 


fJfiN  5    1961  K 

r**^*%  OS 

JAN?       31 


MAR  1  2  1962 


LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


